Katherine J. Chen

Katherine J. Chen is the author of Mary B: A Novel: An untold story of Pride and Prejudice. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to focus on Pride and Prejudice's Mary Bennet in your novel Mary B?

A: It happened organically. Just like you may discover one morning that you can’t really relate to the cartoon heroes of your youth anymore, I found myself growing more and more distant from the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet.

My eye began to wander to the corners of the screen and of the page, and I was intrigued by the sister who lived in the shadows.

People are quick to cast Mary off as a bookworm or as a sermonizing, pseudo-intellectual fool. Austen herself describes Mary as, “the only plain one in the family,” yet she “worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments [and] was always impatient for display.”

Pride and Prejudice, being a cornerstone of English literature, is a book you can return to again and again. You’ll find new gems within the text each time.

So, on one of the occasions I re-read Pride and Prejudice, and in the state of mind I was in at the time, I began to develop a curiosity for Mary.

It interested me that she is singled out as being physically deficient, even defective. A daughter who can’t be married off (unless she is independently wealthy) is more or less a life-long burden to her family.

It interested me that, as a result of being aware of her own faults, she...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue